Two interesting incidents from my travel back home from college on the train today:
Three girls of around 17-18 years of age got in a couple of stations after I did. They were well-dressed, looked as if they were from a good college and are from well-to-do families (the quality of the clothes, the expensive cell phones etc). There were two empty seats in the compartment next to each other, so one of the three girls asked (almost demanded) the middle aged lady in the third seat to move to another empty seat at the other side of the compartment so that she could sit with her friends. The lady said she couldn’t move and it was quite obvious why; she had a therapeutic belt around her back and it was quite clear she had trouble moving around. Still this young girl was grumbling about how inconsiderate the lady was being and being quite determined to sit next to her friends, squished herself on the little space that was left after her friends were seated, making seating difficult for all four of them despite the empty seat in the compartment. The irony at the end of this all: on having sat down, all three of them took out their cellphones, got busy with surfing the net/ chatting/ facebook and hardly spoke 2-3 sentences to each other till one by one they started getting off the train on reaching their destinations.
Two stations after these girls had boarded the train, four eunuchs got in and plonked themselves on the floor of the compartment. They started talking to each other loudly and gesturing boisterously. Everyone in the compartment either started giving them dirty looks or being afraid of them because of whatever beliefs they may have. Three stations later, an old lady (a mavshi) got in with a large load. She had mistaken the first class compartment for a luggage compartment as they are of the same size. She also decided to sit on the floor of the compartment as she couldn’t stand but she was finding it difficult to move her luggage around. It was these four eunuchs (who are supposedly uneducated and whom everyone was giving dirty looks and judging) that helped her settle down her load and sit down comfortably.
Really makes me think about the notions we have...
